As we have seen from the last chapter, Russian women under the Bolsheviks and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom could not reconcile their goals and create a WILPF section. The ideals and goals of the Soviet government and WILPF were too divergent, too different to develop a national section. Russian women were forced to look to other organisations to forge international connections with women of other nationalities; the defining characteristic of these organisations was that they were largely Soviet backed and controlled. These international groups were not of a feminist character and were not overtly pacifist, unlike the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Their goals differed, but they did include some
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The participation of Russian women in these organisations will be examined to explain why these organisations focused disproportionately on Soviet and class issues. The Communist Women’s International was founded in 1920 and disbanded in 1930 at the same time as the Zhenotdel, the Russian women’s bureau, while the International Women’s Secretariat survived into the 1930s. The goals of the women’s section were twofold: first, the creation of women’s bureaus within the framework of the national communist parties affiliated to the Comintern, and second, the dissemination of propaganda among women workers of various countries, in order to impress upon them the importance of their participation in the class struggle.
I will then examine the trajectory of WILPF in the 1930s in to demonstrate the priorities of the group in this tempestuous decade; WILPF’s response to the rise of fascism and its commitment to absolute pacifism under the threat of another world war will be discussed. The relationship between WILPF and interwar socialism will be established with particular reference to women like Gabrielle Duchêne whose pacifism and socialism …show more content…
Partly due to the reputation of these women, the International Women’s Secretariat ‘enjoyed a much greater autonomy in the Comintern than any of its other departments’. The first meeting of the women’s section of the Comintern was held in Leningrad on 16 July 1920, as a ‘private meeting of women and men delegates’ from nine countries: France, England, Italy, Russia, Sweden Georgia, India, Mexico and Bulgaria. The first incarnation of the official International Women’s Secretariat was made up largely of Russian women. Six out of the eight members of the secretariat were Russian: Nadezhda Krupskaya, Alexandra Kollontai, Zlata Lilina, Konkordia Samoilova, Lyudmila Stal, and a woman only identified as Similova. These women, at least in part, had been influenced by the feminist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but in the years following the First Women’s Conference the feminist influences diminished. Some of the feminists of the organisation, Helene Brion and Sylvia Pankhurst for example, moved away from the international communist movement as they became disillusioned by its authoritarian politics and its insufficient responses to the needs of women. These empty spaces in the women’s section of the Comintern were filled by
The participation of Russian women in these organisations will be examined to explain why these organisations focused disproportionately on Soviet and class issues. The Communist Women’s International was founded in 1920 and disbanded in 1930 at the same time as the Zhenotdel, the Russian women’s bureau, while the International Women’s Secretariat survived into the 1930s. The goals of the women’s section were twofold: first, the creation of women’s bureaus within the framework of the national communist parties affiliated to the Comintern, and second, the dissemination of propaganda among women workers of various countries, in order to impress upon them the importance of their participation in the class struggle.
I will then examine the trajectory of WILPF in the 1930s in to demonstrate the priorities of the group in this tempestuous decade; WILPF’s response to the rise of fascism and its commitment to absolute pacifism under the threat of another world war will be discussed. The relationship between WILPF and interwar socialism will be established with particular reference to women like Gabrielle Duchêne whose pacifism and socialism …show more content…
Partly due to the reputation of these women, the International Women’s Secretariat ‘enjoyed a much greater autonomy in the Comintern than any of its other departments’. The first meeting of the women’s section of the Comintern was held in Leningrad on 16 July 1920, as a ‘private meeting of women and men delegates’ from nine countries: France, England, Italy, Russia, Sweden Georgia, India, Mexico and Bulgaria. The first incarnation of the official International Women’s Secretariat was made up largely of Russian women. Six out of the eight members of the secretariat were Russian: Nadezhda Krupskaya, Alexandra Kollontai, Zlata Lilina, Konkordia Samoilova, Lyudmila Stal, and a woman only identified as Similova. These women, at least in part, had been influenced by the feminist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but in the years following the First Women’s Conference the feminist influences diminished. Some of the feminists of the organisation, Helene Brion and Sylvia Pankhurst for example, moved away from the international communist movement as they became disillusioned by its authoritarian politics and its insufficient responses to the needs of women. These empty spaces in the women’s section of the Comintern were filled by